In the November of 2024 presidential election, CNN exit polling indicated that Donald Trump won the support of 76 percent of voters who answered that in the past year inflation had caused their families “severe hardship.” Now, less than five months later, voters are viewing the Trump administration as failing to address this issue sufficiently. A March 27-28 CBS poll found that 64 percent of polled individuals believed the Trump administration was “not enough” focused on lowering prices.
That CBS poll also found that 55 percent of polled individuals thought the Trump administration was focusing “too much” on putting tariffs on goods — an action commonly and correctly understood as sure to result in higher prices.
Prices, though, one may argue, are not the sole measure of people’s economic condition. The bad news for Republican politicians hoping not to be harmed in their election prospects by an unpopular presidential administration is that the CBS poll also indicates that the overall assessment of the Trump administration’s effect on polled individuals’ finances has since the election flipped from positive to negative. In January, before Trump was sworn in as president, there was optimism with 42 percent of CBS poll respondents then saying they expected that Trump’s policies would make them financially better off versus only 28 percent saying the policies would make them worse off. Now, the numbers have flipped, with the optimistic view coming in at 23 percent and the pessimistic one at 42 percent.
Expect election losses for Republicans in the United States House of Representatives and Senate. As Ron Paul Institute Advisory Board Member and former US House member John J. Duncan, Jr. explained in a column last week, losses in Congress are the norm for members of a president’s party in mid-term elections. Such losses can be expected to especially be the case when voters tend to blame that president’s administration for increased prices the voters have to pay and for their worsened overall financial condition.
